A chapter ends.
It’s officially over. Nine months gone by and I’m sitting here wondering…
How?
How did I live out of a backpack for nine months?
How did I take cold showers with broken shower heads?
How did I sleep on some blow-up air pad thing?
How did I manage to eat only Asian, Albanian, and South American food over the course of nine months?
How did I budget to eat off of $5 a day for nine months?
How did I go without any of the comforts I knew my whole life? My family, my day to day life, my routines, and even my bed.
How did I make it without my family?
How did I make it without a washing machine and dryer?
How did I make it without my drawers full of clothes?
How did I make it in a community with people I hadn’t known my whole life?
How did I manage to be okay with waking up every single morning with someone in the same room as me?
How did I manage to abide by a buddy rule that didn’t allow me (an introvert) to leave the perimesis by myself?
How did I make it away from my best and closest friends?
Honestly, how did I do it?
How did I make it without being able to respond to texts and emails but maybe once a week, and in that time barely only able to respond to family?
How did I make it with a little bit of limited wifi?
How did I go without the little things that I’d use typically on a day to day basis at home?
How did make it with same wardrobe of limited shirts and pants for such a long time?
How did I sleep without AC in the heat of the season in Cambodia?
How did I make it through the claustrophobic van rides that seemed to last forever?
How did I make it through the stress of rarely feeling like I had everything I needed?
But most of all, how, and why, did I give up a very important year of my life?
Most things, I’m unsure of. But the most important things I do know.
It was all for God and it was so worth it.
Where there was sorrow, there was joy.
When it was confusing, there was peace.
When it was so freaking hard, I learned a kind of simplicity of life.
When I was living with the kids whose only idea of fun was playing soccer with a scraped up ball in bare feet, I learned what it meant to be thankful.
When I walked into a grocery store the size of my room at home, I learned how much simpler life is with limited options.
When I got impatient, I learned how to love through it.
On the days of silence when I had no phone, no friends, no distractions, I learned a stillness I could have never experienced in the busyness of life I was used to.
When I felt purposeless, I learned purposes God has for even the mundane.
When I saw no fruit but was only planting seeds, I learned trust.
When I was worn down, I found a deeper strength within.
When I was weak. When I was ready to give up and go home, I found the heart and motivation to push through the challenges.
And when I felt I could go no further, He picked me up. He put me on His shoulders. And He carried me the rest of the way.
God is faithful and He will never leave me. He will never forsake me. He will always stand right by my side preparing me for what’s to come. He will always take me further into His purposes for this life, even if He has to carry me when I can’t make it myself. His purposes are good. He cares for the uncared, hears the unheard, heals the broken, and seeks those that are unsought. Honestly, who is like Him? But one thing Ive learned is that I wasn’t meant to make it on my own. On this journey, on my next journey, through my whole life. And it took this journey for Him to show me that. To tear me down so He could build me up. To pick me apart so He could put me back together. I can’t make it on my own. I was never meant to. We were never meant to. If any passage from scripture were to best describe what I’ve learned and experienced on this trip.
“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power may rest on me. This is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak; them I am made strong.”
2 Corinthians 12:8-9
A season comes, a season goes,
A harvest promised, a harvest sown.
‘How willl I make it, it seems so slow?’
Yet, here I am, on my way home.
I made it this far, on strength not my own.
Lord, WE made it; I’m heading home.
And so to you all at home patiently waiting, I’ll see you soon.
A new chapter begins
